Unspoken Words
by licensedtowrite
Summary: Cophine, post 1x10, two-shot?, 2K , I added a second chapter with Delphine's perspective on the events. Sample: "Then, soft, yet powerful, she felt Delphine's lips on hers. She responded in kind, unable to resist the kiss, because it was more than a kiss. It was a message, a communication beyond words, and Cosima listened" Delphine is there for Cosima, and she always will be.
1. Chapter 1

**EDIT: I do not own Orphan Black or any of its characters.**

3:43 am. Cosima stared at the hotel's digital clock, squinting in the green glare that illuminated the small space around it. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her breathing, but that only made the gurgle more prominent. She tried to distract herself but with what? The clone club, biology that only reminded her of her own degrading lungs, DYAD and all the destruction it had brought into her life. Cosima's breaths became strained-from panic or illness, she wasn't sure. Probably both. She could feel a coughing fit coming on and she struggled to stay calm, she didn't want room service finding blood-stained sheets during their rounds, and she absolutely did not want to have to explain blood-stained sheets.

A small round of knocks sounded at the door, hesitant like the knocker wasn't sure they had the right room. Cosima usually would have ignored it but she welcomed the distraction at the moment. She rolled out of bed and crossed the room, standing up on her toes to peer through the tiny peephole. Even without her glasses she could make out the blonde curls that could only be Delphine's. She took in another deep breath and opened the door just as Delphine was turning to leave.

"Yeah?" Cosima's voice came out more groggily than she expected.

"Oh, I, uh, nothing. Nothing, I'll just go back to my room..." The blonde bit her lip and began to turn again.

"What is it?" Cosima could tell Delphine wanted something.

Delphine turned around, hesitating slightly before returning to Cosima's door.

"I guess I just wanted to, well, to check on you. It's stupid, I'll go. I'm sorry I woke you." Delphine was about to leave again when Cosima reached out, grazing Delphine's forearm with her fingertips.

"Wait, stay?" Cosima couldn't manage saying the whole sentence. She didn't want to ask the blonde to stay, she didn't want to cave in so easily to the woman who had betrayed her. Yet Delphine understood her in a way no one else could, she made her feel real and important and so much more than a geek monkey. And right then, when her lungs threatened to bleed again, she needed someone who cared, or at least pretended to.

Delphine only paused a moment before following Cosima into the room. Cosima didn't look at her but she could feel Delphine's eyes follow her. Cosima crawled back into bed, settling back into the divot she'd left when she got up, and Delphine rolled in next to her, waiting. Cosima pressed her back into the blonde, pulling Delphine's arm around her. Cosima listened to the breaths she felt on her neck, warm and steady. She mirrored the breaths in her own, focusing solely on her respiration and Delphine's warmth.

4:20 am. Cosima was finally drifting into the brief respite that is sleep when she shook involuntarily. A harsh breath forced her mouth agape and she could taste the red. Nausea swirled in her stomach and she stared at the clock to keep herself rooted in the now spinning room. 4:20, she thought, great advice from an alarm clock, but tragically my weed is back in Minnesota.

Another cough rolled her forward and she leaned on her elbow to cough over the floor, rather than the sheets she would be lying in for at least two more hours. Cosima felt a light pressure rubbing small, worried circles into her back.

"I'm fine," she barely got halfway through the second word before another hack sent her into a fit that left her gasping and trembling from head to toe. She felt the warmth at her back withdraw from the bed, only to see Delphine round her side of the mattress, roll of toilet paper in hand.

"Here," she said, handing Cosima a scrunched handful, which, after being soaked to the point of uselessness, was replaced with another and another. Delphine's hands, gingerly at first, and then more assuredly, gathered up Cosima's stray dreads and held them through the earthquake that seemed to shake Cosima's whole form.

After what felt like an hour, yet turned out to be only fifteen minutes, Cosima collapsed backwards into her pillow, still clutching the blood-stained paper in her hand. She felt a hand skim her cheek and enjoyed the affection for a fleeting moment, letting her head loll into the embrace it provided. The hand left, only to return a moment later with a fresh piece of tissue to dab carefully around Cosima's crimson besmirched lips. Cosima stayed motionless, not having the energy, nor the want, to stop Delphine.

Cosima felt the bed rise an almost undetectable amount, and heard quiet ruffling as Delphine disposed of the bloody remnants and restored the roll of toiletry to it's proper place in the bathroom.

Delphine shut the bathroom door and hesitated as she took in the sight of Cosima on the mattress. She watched Cosima's chest rise, almost evenly, almost steadily. She watched, and she thought. She thought of all the almost's and what ifs and could-have-beens of the past month. How she almost didn't decide to monitor Cosima, how she almost gained Cosima's trust. How she almost lost Cosima forever; and for what? For DYAD, for Leekie? For an experiment she saw as unethical, no matter how brilliant, from the start? Looking at Cosima then, she knew she wouldn't, couldn't, lose her. From now on she was on Cosima's side, and she would act only in the interest of what was right.

Cosima felt Delphine's shadow leaning over her and waited curiously, too exhausted to open her eyes or ask a question. She felt warmth on her face and registered it as Delphine's breath. Then, soft, yet powerful, she felt Delphine's lips on hers. She responded in kind, unable to resist the kiss, because it was more than a kiss. It was a message, a communication beyond words, and Cosima listened. It said protection, and loyalty, and honesty, and it said I am here. It said love. It was only then that she could truly feel the words, "It's not a lie. It's not possible." Yes, Cosima thought, it shows.

**Author's Note: This is my first fanfiction and I would love some constructive criticism if you have any. Also, I'd gladly take any cophine prompts (AU or otherwise), if anyone wants me to write something. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: This whole chapter will be from Delphine's POV. The italics are Delphine's thoughts. I want to thank everyone who read the first chapter and I would like to specially thank Julie Lein who commented on the last chapter and inspired this one (along with making my day). Please comment/review and let me know what you think. This chapter turned out to be very introspective which I tend to do on accident quite often and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Some of the style techniques may look familiar because I seem to gravitate towards short. Dramatic. Sentences. I should probably cut back on those. Anyway, enjoy the fic and I should probably add that I do not own Orphan Black or any of its characters.**

3:20 am. Delphine rested her strained eyes against her palms, resisting the urge to rub at the already agitated corneas. She shut the laptop in front of her, almost slamming it with the annoyance of yet another dead end in her research of Cosima's respiratory disorder.

"Putain!" Delphine left her seat in front of the computer desk to pace the room in frustration and anguish: the familiar, corrosive offspring of failure. She could feel her throat tighten and her eyes burn as exhaustion and desperation bubbled into broken sobs.

She let her head rest against the cool window pane for a time, cursing hotels for their sealed windows and non-smoking rooms. She wiped the residual tears from her cheeks before returning to her bed in search of sleep, but sleep was nowhere to be found.

After what felt like an eternity of tossing and turning and pillow flipping, Delphine squinted at the alarm clock: 3:40am. Suddenly, it was loneliness that overwhelmed her. She craved the embrace of someone else, she craved Cosima. _No_, she thought. _I will not disturb Cosima for my selfish wants, I do not deserve to. But...she could be sick, or lonely, or scared. Maybe she wants me..._

She couldn't help it really, she was a craving addict, and addicts rationalize. She rationalized. _She could be dying_, Delphine told herself as she left her room. _She shouldn't be alone right now_, she thought as she walked the long hallway with the awful carpet to Cosima's room. _I need to prove that I'm here for her_, as she knocked on the door.

Even with all her self-assurances, her knock became a shy series of taps, loud enough to be heard by someone who was already awake, but quiet enough that they wouldn't disturb someone already asleep.

As she fidgeted outside the door she felt her embarrassment burn at her cheeks and neck, and it quickly cauterized all the nerve she'd built up on the way. She turned to escape to her own room, but then the door opened. _Merde_.

"Yeah?"

Delphine bit her lip, Cosima's sleep voice was almost indistinguishable from her sex voice. Delphine turned back to face her and inexplicably forgot ninety percent of her English lexicon. She stumbled over a few sentences and attempted to make a quick getaway, but Cosima wasn't letting her off that easy.

"What is it?"

Delphine told her the truth, well, the edited truth. She told her she was there to check on her, and she was. But mostly she was there because she needed Cosima, and no matter how many times she told herself she had no right to need her, she did.

Delphine's second attempt at a retreat was almost successful, but then Cosima was asking her to stay. She said it with her voice, which would have been enough, but it was her face that squeezed Delphine's heart, and punched her in the gut simultaneously. Delphine knew that look, she knew it from the mirror. The face of conflicted helplessness, the face of ashamed concession. Cosima was just as powerless to her addiction as Delphine was, and part of Delphine hated that she caused so much pain and conflict in Cosima, but another part of her-the selfish part-brightened._ She needs me just as much as I need her. She hasn't given up on us. We have a chance._

Delphine didn't respond in words, she didn't need to-it's amazing how fast lovers learn to communicate in looks and slight nods of the head. Delphine pulled the door shut behind her and watched Cosima climb back into bed. She knew she was expected to climb in next, but this new relationship, the one borne from betrayal and uncertainty, was strange and undefined, and riddled with hesitation.

She followed Cosima soon after, however, but she made no move to embrace the petite brunette. Their relationship was now an indefinite game of follow the leader, and Cosima was the designated leader. Thankfully, the leader wanted to be spooned by the follower, and soon Delphine was drifting into an irresistible sleep.

* * *

4:20 am. At first she thought she had tripped in her dream. Her heart raced, her body jolted forward, her mind went in and out of coherency like eyes adjusting to a change in the light. She hated tripping in dreams, it's like building a stack of cards and getting all the way to the last two, only to have a stray ball crash through the delicate architecture, yet that night she would have given anything just to be a clumsy dream walker, but why would luck smile upon them now? At least it was consistent in its damnation.

After some blinking and eye rubbing, Delphine was fully aware of Cosima's coughing fit, and for a moment, an imperceptible second, she froze. She froze because she thought. She thought about how far she had fallen for this woman, she thought about how long she had stared at research papers and test results and morally gray drug trials without any useful solution to this woman's degrading lungs, and she thought about how lonely she had felt earlier that night. She imagined a world without Cosima, a world of empty beds and silent mornings, a world without I love you's and cheeky comments, and a world where accidental Eskimo pie sightings made her freeze and forget how to walk because the grief was so overwhelming that her human brain could not even process it enough to cry, only enough to buffer in an attempt to process-an attempt to move on.

Cosima coughed. Delphine blinked._ That world is not a possibility, I won't let it be_. And then Delphine was in action, rubbing cautious circles into Cosima's back, head swiveling in search of a tissue box and, when a tissue box failed to materialize, running to the bathroom to retrieve the roll of toilet paper there. In a second she was at Cosima's side again, tearing off a section of tissue and handing it to her. She went to hold her dreads, unsure at first of whether or not this crossed a boundary, but when Cosima coughed again, almost rolling onto her stomach from the force, Delphine knew this was no time for boundaries. Delphine's hands were everywhere at once: holding her dreads, rubbing her back, handing her toilet paper.

When Cosima finally collapsed in utter exhaustion, Delphine sat like a soldier waiting for an order: hands at the ready, eyes on the alert, body ready to react to anything. It took almost a whole minute for her to switch gears from soldier to girlfriend.

She watched Cosima for a moment, back to unsure boundaries and superfluous hesitation, before reaching out to cup Cosima's cheek with her shaking hand. She felt Cosima relax into the touch, and for a moment Delphine's lips turned upwards and her heart fluttered, and she thought Cosima's did too._ This is my world, this is my everything. And what we have is real, I know it is Cosima, because even after everything that has happened and everything that will happen, I feel I am the luckiest girl in the world; because you chose me Cosima, you idiot. You chose me and now we're both screwed._

A drop of blood trickled towards Cosima's chin and Delphine withdrew her hand to catch it with a fresh tissue. She dabbed at Cosima's lips and chin until the crimson was gone, and Cosima looked even paler than usual in the sudden absence of color.

Delphine gathered up the bloody discards and returned the toilet paper to its holder. As she left the bathroom and gazed at Cosima she thought of Leekie and DYAD and how wrong she had been, how naive and stupid; and she resolved to make it right, to be better, not only for Cosima, but for herself as well.

She wasn't sure when it'd happened, when she'd become such a monstre. When rationalizations had become justifications, and when wrong became so routine it didn't require justifications.  
All she knew was, she was Delphine Cormier and she loved Cosima Niehaus.  
She was Delphine Cormier and she was not a monstre.  
She was Delphine Cormier and she would never let herself down again, not for anyone or anything.  
And that is why Cosima is so merveilleux, because she would never let Delphine become a monstre, because she reminded her of who she is, and who she is is good and worth something.

And she can never thank her enough.

But a kiss is always a good start.


End file.
